1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image reading apparatus, an image forming apparatus, and an image forming system that employs the image reading apparatus and the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and a multi function printer (MFP) is equipped with an image reading apparatus for reading the image of a document. The image reading apparatus includes an automatic document feeder (ADF) and a scanner. The ADF advances a plurality of pages of document to the scanner on a page-by-page basis. The scanner reads the image of each page of document fed by the ADF.
The scanner includes an image-reading sensor. The image-reading sensor reads the image of the document fed by the ADF as well as the image of a document placed on a flatbed. For reading the image of the document placed on the flatbed, the document must be pressed against the flatbed by a flatboard. For this reason, the image-reading sensor must be positioned outside of an image reading area on the flatbed when the image of the document fed by the ADF is read.
The conventional image reading apparatus of the aforementioned configuration suffers from a problem in that the image-reading sensor disposed outside of the image reading area increases the overall size of the image reading apparatus.